The Gin-House
by Ju-dou
Summary: Historical/Southern Gothic/THG crossover AU. 16-year-old Katniss is married to plantation owner, Cato. Peeta is a slave. When their paths cross an unstoppable chain of events is set in motion. Trigger warnings for domestic violence.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This started out as a PIP one shot for Seven Deadly Sins, and then it turned into this! Let me know what you think :)_

* * *

**Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain** ~ William Faulkner

* * *

She runs the tip of her finger down the gap between the shutters and considers opening them and climbing out onto the roof of the portico. Behind her, spread across the bed, her new husband sleeps. He sleeps silently. She thought he would snore, in fact he barely breathes, little shallow breaths like a cat. Katniss can't fill her lungs in this room, either, as if she might inhale a frilly valance or lace doily by accident.

She feels like she hasn't exhaled all day so she does so now, a long trembling sigh, expelling every powdery kiss and clammy handclasp from the receiving line. And especially purging the memory of Cato's fingers between the ribbons of her corset, the sharp nail on one of his hands catching and snagging her chemise. Her mother had told her to close her eyes but she hadn't, she looked at the pimple on the side of his red-gold neck as he moved above her, and she thought about pricking it and drawing blood.

Perhaps she will sleep on the floor, curled on a blanket, her arms aching with the absence of Prim. It would be less uncomfortable than contorting her body to fit around a man she doesn't want to touch. She is used to layers protecting her from men like Cato, acres of boundaries; petticoats and muslin, forcing a distance that her disinterested eyes don't seem to convey clearly enough. He didn't intend to be refused from the first moment they met when he danced too close and said too much. She had become used to being overlooked, had come to rely on it. She had thought it would last forever. Gale used to smile when she said that, when she said she planned to shun corsetry and stay out in the fields with him riding her father's handsome hunter. She said she would rather fall from the horse and break her neck than get married at sixteen. She said.

Now, there will be a week of parties and barbecues from which she can't escape, and, then, the wedding trip. Katniss cannot begin to think of that trip, of how it will be without the familiar presence of her sister, or of Gale, taking a dance with her as he did today and whispering reassurance without leaning too close to her ear. His smell and touch soothed Katniss. Her husband watched, his tongue flicking the mint garnish on his glass idly, his eyes never leaving them. He led the next reel with Clove, his pale gaze still upon Katniss, his upper lip raised in something very like a sneer when she was forced to take the hand of his younger brother who trod relentlessly on her toes.

Gale hates Cato, although he has never said so, she knows.

Katniss had never imagined getting married. She knew she would have to marry of course, but the actual process; the wedding, had never entered her mind. She thought she had longer, and she thought that it would be Gale; her constant. She wishes she could slip out now, down the heavily polished staircase, the deep pile of the rugs at the bottom swallowing her footsteps. Gale will be awake. He might even be out with his gun, looking for the burn of a deer's eyes in the night. He will want to kill something, tonight. The idea of never hunting with Gale again, never swimming with him in the river when the heat of the day began to press in on all sides, hollows out a part of Katniss' chest and leaves behind an ache. She aches for freedom.

Cato stirs. He sits up and his outline shimmers in the grey half-dark. She can't make out his face but she feels him looking at her.

"Come back to bed," he says.

Katniss swallows the lump in her throat and obeys. She nears the bed and his hand reaches out and closes around her wrist, his rough thumb caresses the thin skin there as he pulls her down beside him. She is glad she can't see his face as his fingers pass across her cheekbone and thread into her hair. Cato leans forwards and presses his lips hard against her neck, releasing her wrist and pulling down the front of her nightgown. He is rough and Katniss is not used to being touched. Her body protests and she tenses, thanking God for the darkness as she screws her eyes shut in mortification as he squeezes her breast. A boy after Sunday school once touched her chest and Katniss punched him in the nose, blood in clots staining his shirt. She cannot fight or refuse her husband. Reluctantly, she holds her hands against his firm chest, imagining that she is pushing him away.

Katniss hopes vaguely that he will grow tired of this as he tugs her nightdress over her head and presses her beneath him. It hurts. Distracting herself she imagines the shade of cedars overhead, the pinkish red flesh revealed when Gale swings his axe to chop a log, the way his blade never jars and the ease at which he raises it and lets it fall. He made her bow with that wood. She cannot forget the smell of her first bow burning, the heady incense stinging her eyes as her mother watched from an upstairs window. From then on she kept her bow in the woods where it no doubt remains.

Cato grunts and his skin is moist, slick against her own. She thinks of Mrs Calhoun next door and wonders whether her mother-in-law has listened this night, waiting for their union to become official, for there to be no turning back as she picks at her needle work in poor light. Momma doesn't sleep, Cato had said when they came up to bed, waving his hand impatiently when Katniss tiptoed around the room. It is impossible to tell whether this is true or not. Mrs Calhoun perpetuates the image of the indefatigable matron, an aristocratic beauty of Capitol descent who moves in her own small world with a total lack of concern, directing the running of the plantation as if she has always done so. She speaks as though everything is a perfectly placed afterthought, as if it hardly warrants her time to mention it at all, so confident is she in her divine power. Katniss has no concept of menus, of making calls or entertaining guests and she sincerely hopes that Mrs Calhoun will expect little from her besides sitting silently by her mother-in-law during such occasions.

There will be time to get away, she tells herself; she will find little escapes.

* * *

Cato is bored of her. He tugs off his collar and throws it across the room, his lip curls petulantly, the white cravat crumpled in his hand. Katniss looks down at the bouquets on the heavily embroidered sofa. She wishes he would go back down to the saloon and play cards. She cannot think why he takes any heed of what Mrs Mortmain says. Katniss stopped listening the day they arrived at the hotel and remained unmoved when the older woman followed her to the bath house each morning dispensing her wisdom as they sat in the springs. Katniss felt her remaining health and vigor seep away into the water, but it had nothing to do with Mrs Mortmain.

Cato is sweating and he smells of whisky. She doesn't tell him to go. Exhausted from the journey she asked him to sleep in the dressing room on their first night and he squeezed her face, his thumb digging into one cheek and his fingertips pressing against her other cheekbone. He squeezed until she began to cry hot angry tears.

"That woman is a bitch," Cato says.

Katniss stares at her hands folded in her lap.

"Why in God's name would she think I care a damn what her husband would do on my plantation?"

It is not a question so Katniss doesn't answer.

He paces, ripping at his cuffs and dropping them on the floor.

Katniss remembers the scarlet flush that crept over her husband's face during the interminable dinner, the oblivious matron talking on and on, barely pausing to swallow her venison, a globule of gravy remaining at the corner of her thin lip.

"Does she think me stupid?"

"I don't think so," Katniss says.

He stops mid stride and turns on her.

"You don't _think_ so?"

She tries to school defiance from her features but it contorts her brow automatically.

"Get up."

She stands and Cato places one finger under her chin to tilt her gaze up to his. He kisses her face. Katniss jolts, recoiling from him as she feels the sting of his teeth on her cheek. He clamps a hand to the small of her back and her fingers are shaking as she reaches to push his face away. Katniss tries to stifle a yelp but it escapes her lips as pain travels along her cheekbone. She recalls the nip one of the horses once gave her when she removed its bit, the way she jerked away immediately and struck the animal on the nose. She cannot strike Cato. He is biting her and she is afraid to move in case his jaw closes completely on her flesh. She can fend off a horse but not her husband. Tears burn her eyes and she raises her hands to hold onto his forearms until, finally, he lets go.

Slowly, he replaces his collar, cuffs and cravat, and leaves the room.

Katniss pretends to be asleep when Cato returns hours later. She holds herself as still as possible, her hands closed into fists beneath her chin. She sleeps little that night, and the next, until Mrs Mortmain declares that the springs seem to be having the opposite effect on the new Mrs Calhoun.

* * *

The bunk house is insufferably hot, even in the night, and he can taste the sweat on his upper lip. The air is full and heavy enough to touch, the odour is of twenty men pressed together, sour and companionable. For a moment he almost reaches out and presses his fingers to the shoulder of the man to his left hand side. They breathe, pass gas and snore in their sleep and Peeta wonders if he is the only one awake. Fatigue twists in his muscles and presses him into the mat. The indulgence of sleep beckons but a twitch between his eyebrows tugs and persuades him to stare into the dark above his head until it turns grey.

It is better here, in some ways, he is clear sighted enough to see the positives of his situation. No longer is he beaten by his mother, humiliated by his brothers, forced to endure the petty indignities he experienced back home. Here, his suffering is real, and it is better for it. The money paid for him has secured his father's business and his father loved him more for his sacrifice. They own his body, but there is so much more that they can't reach, that nothing could prise from him.

A noise outside disturbs Peeta and he sits up quickly, trying to make out the position of the gun leant against the wall by the door. He picks his way through the sleeping men and carefully undoes the latch without touching the gun. He has never fired a gun, never intends to. Outside, the air is fresh in comparison and Peeta feels the perspiration cool on the back of his neck. He can hear footsteps.

"Hey," he calls.

A hand appears and hauls him against the wood boards of the bunk-house. Peeta resists until the face of the plantation's over-seer is revealed in shadow close to his, the breath stale and heavily liquored.

"What are you doing out of bed, boy?"

"I heard a noise."

"You hear a noise round here, you close your eyes tighter."

"Yes, sir."

He pats Peeta's cheek with a rough palm and releases him.

"If you can't sleep you're not working hard enough. Now get."

Haymitch is gone as suddenly as he appeared and Peeta doesn't move immediately. He looks up at the house, through the branches of a cedar to a lighted window above the portico, a dark silhouette is back lit, there, and Peeta's chest shudders. It is a woman. He cannot remember the last time he was within feet of a woman, unless he counts his mother. She must see him, as he sees her, or else she is merely looking out into the darkness. It can only be the mistress. The other boys have talked of her a little, that she is beautiful in an insolent sort of way, she is not a natural match for the Master, that she is little more than a girl and barely any time ago she was riding horses bare back on a broken down plantation less than five miles away. She sounds fascinating, and Peeta can't help but wonder if she is the girl he saw on a cantankerous black stallion without a saddle, the day the truck broke down and they travelled to work here by foot. He had brought up the rear, an infected mosquito bite sending hot ribbons of pain up his leg, and she had tossed him a handful of berries wrapped in a handkerchief. He still has the handkerchief, an uneven _K _stitched into the corner.

He is cushioned by the darkness, protected by it, and he continues to tilt his head up to look at the window. Then, suddenly, the light is out, and she is gone.

Peeta sits down on the ground, his fingertips swirling invisibly in the dirt, a slight breeze at the back of his neck. There is birdsong, somewhere, shrouded in night, a lonely single call, the same note repeated until it feels like the creature is crying for help.

She isn't a woman; she is a girl, the girl with the berries.

She stands a few feet away from him and Peeta scrambles to his feet. Like a ghost in her white night gown, he almost expects her to vanish when his eyes settle uncertainly on her face. It is dark, but not so dark that he can't see the others were right; she is beautiful, and defiant.

"You were staring at me. I came down to ask why," she says.

"I… well, I was just getting some air, too hot to sleep."

"Oh. It must be stuffy in there." She gestures at the bunkhouse and Peeta nods. "Maybe you should sleep outside."

"I don't think Haymitch would like that."

"No, I suppose not."

"Can't you sleep?" he asks and their eyes meet, she holds his gaze and he wonders at his own insolence.

"I don't sleep well," she says. "I'm going to get a cold drink. Do you want one?"

Peeta shakes his head. "We drink out of the well in the morning."

"Ok, good night, then."

And, she is gone.

He sees her the next day, in the carriage with Mrs Calhoun Senior on their way to pay calls and Peeta stops in the field, straightening his back and pretending to squint into the sun. He wonders at the risk she took coming downstairs last night, her husband must sleep soundly. She seemed like an apparition, covered in weak moonlight, and the image of her stayed before him for much of that restless night.

Peeta watches until the carriage disappears through the trees at the end of the driveway. The leather of a whip slashes across his bare calves and a bolt of pain travels up Peeta's back. He turns to see Thread, dark eyes unsmiling, he raises his arm again and Peeta bends down, picking a boll of cotton and rolling it between his fingers before dropping it into a basket. His blond hair glows in the sun, tousled bleached waves dark with sweat around his hairline, perspiration trickling down his back. He wishes he could swim, plunge into the river two fields over with the rest of the boys, let the water cover his face, it must be quiet down, there. He wonders if she can swim.

* * *

Momma, as she instructed Katniss to call her when she returned from honeymoon, is taking tea with Effie Trinket in order to discuss the end of season ball. No input is required from Katniss so she watches a fly stuck between the window and the screen, butting its head in vain and darting in random directions as if spinning a web. Effie's morning room is white and pink and there is the head of a deer on the wall. Katniss can tell that the eye socket has been reconstructed and a marble placed inside it, and she wonders if this woman in a high lace collar shot the animal cleanly through the eye herself. She doubts it. Effie sits with her back to where it's mounted, maybe she always sits like that in this room, with the creature looking down on her, its tongue protruding slightly from its mouth. Perhaps her husband makes her have it there, watching. It is the kind of thing Cato might do.

"I feel like I've been preparing for this since the day after last year's ball," Effie says.

Katniss smiles woodenly. Her eyes drift back to the window, the white of a cotton field visible through a gap in the willows. The boy will have sweat running down his back, heat reddening his cheeks, his arms straining, the muscles in his back curling. She remembers the wide eyed gratitude when she threw him those berries, such a small thing. He sleeps every night in that bunk house, pressed against other men, perhaps it makes him feel safe, being part of a unit like that; belonging. Katniss scolds herself inwardly, how can belonging be any consolation for a slave?

She sips her iced tea. Effie waves her fingers at the red haired maid who adds two further ice cubes to Katniss' glass.

"You look rather flushed, dear."

"A newlywed glow," Momma says, her sapphire eyes holding Katniss' for a second too long.

Effie launches into a detailed description of the table settings she is having delivered from the Capitol and Katniss struggles to keep her eyelids from drooping. A moment later Momma taps her arm with a fingernail.

"I think we should get some air."

Katniss blushes and apologises, feeling slightly unsteady as Momma takes her arm. Effie invites them to take a turn around the plantation should they wish, but will be unable to accompany them due to the strength of the sun, which Katniss finds hard to believe could penetrate the powder on her face.

Momma's arm is thin through her own, almost frail, belying the poise with which she carries herself.

"I find we don't know each other very well, Katniss," she says. "I should like to know you better."

Katniss can think of nothing to say, and she squints under the brim of her hat, her eyes meeting the line of trees that she knows mark the edge of Gale's land. There is nothing she trusts herself to tell Mrs Calhoun. The woman knows about her family, knows that Cato provides generously for them, and she has probably guessed about her mother's illness. All of that is history that doesn't bear repeating and she knows for a fact she will never bring it up unless her mother-in-law does first. For a brief moment Katniss feels cushioned by the familiarity of their surroundings, the coolness of the grass tickling her feet through her sandals, and considers asking Momma just what she should expect from marriage, of how to survive it. There is nobody she can ask that question of.

"I know that you don't sleep well."

Katniss doesn't look at her.

"You may wish to try some of my tablets."

"Oh, no thank you."

Momma stops and Katniss is forced to meet her gaze.

"Maybe not yet, but you will need them."

Katniss frowns, but Momma's face gives nothing away, her thin lips are painted red and her mouth twists for a brief moment before she begins walking again, slightly ahead. A long strand of silver hair hangs loose from her rigid coif and she carries her hat between her fingers. Katniss knows nothing about her, either, and as her mother-in-law walks into the orchard she thinks she would rather not know.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thank you to everyone who has favorited or followed and huge special thanks to those who took the time to review, it means so much. Reviews are love, and they help with the writer's block, for sure! This part is kind of short but I had to try and get the creativity flowing again and shorter seemed better for that. Anyway, I hope you enjoy... if that's the right word. This fic has plenty of triggers and lots of adult themes, so is really for mature readers only :)_

* * *

**Every little boy thinks he invented sin** ~ John Steinbeck

* * *

Dust rises around the wheels of the wagon until it almost seems like the vehicle is floating on a cloud. Cato will not be back tonight, he will stay over at the Heavensbee's, smoking, drinking and thinking he is entering into deals and discussions with other gentlemen. He is playing the plantation owner, the new patriarch: founder of the next dynasty to control this land.

He can be whomever he chooses behind their bedroom door. She hesitates to call him a monster, for this implies a lack of choice, a man rotten from the outset, deformed and immune to his environment and its pressure to conform. A monster knows nothing else. He can be no better.

Katniss lets the net fall back across the window. She looks back at the unmade bed. Ladies sleep in the afternoon. She sinks down on the bed and falls back onto the pillows, the smell of the washing powder reminds her of Cato pressing the cushion over her face, the edges of her vision growing black.

The days are all the same, and the nights, the nights, are unpredictable. She waits for Cato to fall asleep, he is a heavy sleeper, and she goes outside, walks in the orchard, past the gin-house, alone. She never feels alone inside the house. It is part museum, part prison. She is watched by generations of Calhouns, in their portraits, in their heirlooms, in every fabric and carved piece of cedar.

Katniss has never needed company, but she had Gale, then. Here she finds herself passing the kitchen and listening at the door for a moment to the strident tones of the cook and the inventive swearwords she uses to chivvy her girl into action. It almost sounds normal.

There is a meeting of momma's Bridge club, tonight. Katniss cannot play Bridge but it is obligatory that she attend. The thought makes her very bored, and extremely tired.

On the ornate chest of drawers there is a photograph of Cato and his younger brother, Sulla, when they were young boys, frowning in overalls and holding guns. Cato has a hand on Sulla's shoulder, holding him back. Katniss has barely spoken to Sulla, he returned to his school in the Capitol shortly after the wedding and there is little of him in the house, no boots by the back door, no horse of his own in the stables. Cato's gift to her was a horse, a chestnut mare who is barely broken and this is the way Katniss likes her horses, a little wild, hot and unpredictable. Perhaps it was a message, that he considered her unbroken. He is doing his best to break her.

Katniss undoes the front of her silk gown and lifts up her chemise. She examines the bruises on the insides of her thighs, the purple hue edging to green, the bite mark that threatened to become infected until she asked her mother for a remedy under the pretense that a maid had received a dog bite. It won't heal well, the edges are ragged and the skin is raw and shiny. It will scar. At first she didn't fight, she gritted her teeth and stared at the ceiling but the less she fights the more violent he is. He overpowers her but she does not make it easy.

She hears a knock at the door and pulls her gown back around herself and tightens the belt. It is Momma, also clad in her silk afternoon robe. She smiles distantly and sits down on the velvet bench by the dressing table. Her hair is down, black and streaked with bands of silver; it is thicker than it looks when pulled back in a chignon. The air in the room is tight, powdery and dusty with afternoon heat and Momma's eyes travel from Katniss' feet all the way up to her face and she takes a deep breath that seems to further compress the room so that prickles of sweat sting Katniss' hairline.

"Show me," she says.

Katniss presses her lips together, her mouth dry. Slowly, she opens her gown and pulls it up to reveal as little of the top of her leg as possible, enough for Momma to see a bruise. The older woman doesn't flinch, her angular face barely moves. Maybe she can see through walls, maybe she can read Katniss' mind, she shudders inwardly at the thought.

"Men are all the same," Momma says.

Gale is not the same; her father wasn't the same.

"They need to remind us of their power, and that is the only way they can do it. You can't withhold your body from them, but there are other ways to be powerful." She pauses, folding her white hands. "And, that is why we play our game."

"Bridge?"

Momma smiles like a crack in a china plate. "No, dear, not Bridge."

* * *

Peeta's skin is scrubbed clean and he looks down at the stained vest and shorts he is wearing. Thresh and Castor are similarly attired but seem unconcerned with their appearance. They have been here before; in the bare anteroom attached to the ladies sitting room, bare apart from one picture on the wall. Peeta looks at the oil painting and the woman's blue eyes glare back at him accusingly.

Haymitch waved away his questions, shoving him towards where Thresh and Castor were already washing themselves down with a bucket of water, digging under their nails with a file. Peeta couldn't think of a single reason why three slaves should be summoned to the house without Haymitch when the master is away. The others know, they whisper amongst themselves, but nobody tells Peeta anything even when carriages arrive and women step down. Perhaps it is charity, he thinks, something to do with the Welfare for Slaves, although Peeta has never really seen any evidence of it before in the district. Before he became a slave he wondered if it was something invented by the Capitol, a non-existent charitable enterprise for people for whom the state affords no protection.

It sounds like a party. He can hear women's voices through the wall. She might be there. The door opens and a woman he doesn't recognize with hair piled high on her head beckons them forward. They step into the room, into velvet opulence, and it feels like they're about to be sacrificed.

Women sit, some leaning forwards in their seats, their faces lit palely by candlelight. It is silent and Peeta feels their eyes boring hungrily into him. She is there, by the master's mother, but her gaze is directed on the ground. Peeta senses Castor and Thresh step away from him and he sees them slip their arms around the waists of two tightly corseted women and fall into the shadows in the corner of the room. This is the cue for the lull to break, it glitters in lines through the room and Peeta is taken by the hand and pulled down onto the sofa. It is surreal and he is acutely aware of the way his clothes smell, of sweat, and dirt.

Mrs Calhoun stands as Peeta tries to sit at a discreet distance from Katniss. "Pray silence, please," she says, her arms in her silk gown raised in the air like the wings of a butterfly. "This is my daughter-in-law's first meeting, hence there are two boys circulating the room, and this boy…" She gestures at Peeta to stand. "Is offered as her first piece. Katniss."

She snaps her fingers and Peeta feels the breath in his mouth sour as Katniss stands opposite him, her face flushed and her jaw clenched.

Every face in the room is turned to watch them, even the woman who has Thresh's face buried in her cleavage. Peeta's eyes sting in the candlelight as it flickers, his palms are wet and he presses them against the sides of his legs.

"Katniss," Mrs Calhoun repeats, her voice sharp.

Katniss steps closer and Peeta feels he will stop breathing as she reaches out and takes one of his hands. Her eyes tell him nothing, they are clear and unfocused as if she exists outside of this moment, outside of this room, as if she can see something else. She leans forwards and presses her lips to his. His stomach rolls and Peeta can hear his own heart drumming in his ear, the blood rushing, his mouth trembles under hers. He is kissing her. He parts his lips slightly and feels her tongue brush across his: she tastes of outside.

He doesn't see Mrs Calhoun prod Katniss in the back with the end of her cigarette holder and he withdraws, not believing he has just kissed the master's wife in a room full of other women.

"Do not stop," Mrs Calhoun says.

The door opens into the hallway and she presses their hands together, propelling them in front of her at the head of a line. The women follow them up the staircase, laughing, their drinks sloshing onto the carpet.

Katniss stares resolutely ahead but her hand tightens around his as they reach the landing. Peeta's bare feet sink into the antique rug. She knows what is going on, and he doesn't, although it is becoming clearer. The door of one of the guest bedrooms stands open. They walk into the room and Mrs Calhoun pushes the door closed behind them.

Peeta keeps hold of her hand as she turns to face him and sees that her lips are trembling. She starts to undo the stays at the front of her gown and he feels heat rise into his face.

"S-stop," he says. "Why are they making you do this?"

"It's a game."

"A game?"

Katniss nods. "We have to play."

He can feel the pulse in his groin as she closes the space between them and presses her mouth against his, insistently, and he reaches up to push her away. She nips his lip and he loses the feeling in his hands, feels the blood drain from his face. Peeta squirms at the thought that he has had more than one dream about this very moment ever since the first day he saw her. This can't be happening to him. Her hands come up between them without their mouths parting and she pulls open the front of her gown, he feels the shake in her fingers and wants to stop her.

Peeta has never kissed a girl.

He has never seen a woman naked and when Peeta pulls away he feels faint as he looks down at her cleavage, her gaze dipped to avoid his.

"I don't think we have to do this," he stutters. "I can't do this."

Katniss looks up and her gray eyes appear like the flat surface of a puddle. Her pupils are oddly dilated and Peeta catches her arm as she slips to the floor. He helps her sit against the chest at the end of the bed.

"Miss, are you all right?" he whispers, suddenly aware that the women might be listening outside the door.

"No," she whispers back.

* * *

Katniss wakes the next morning in the guest bed, the boy is gone from where he slept beside her on the floor and the blanket she gave him is neatly folded by the nightstand.

She will have to tell Momma that they had sex. She will have to attempt to make up details for the other women. The thought makes her feel sick. Katniss' mouth feels dry and the room spins above her, she doesn't know if these are after effects of the alcohol or the pills. Momma insists she takes the pills, for sleep, for nerves. Her own mother would suggest a hundred natural remedies for anxiety, distrustful of anything that comes from the Capitol, but the pills are the least of Katniss' worries. It is more than nerves. She feels as if she is losing her mind, and not only that, her monthly cycle has stopped.

The previous night exists in her mind in fragments; even the boy's face is blurred. She can't remember what she said to him, what she told him, and fear stirs against her chest, unfurling its spidery legs. Katniss shudders.

She spends the day in her bedroom with the door locked. Nobody disturbs her.

The help have the afternoon off and Katniss flicks back the drapes to watch the maids and cook linking arms and beginning their walk down the long driveway.

She could visit Prim and her mother, tomorrow. She thinks about changing out of corsets and petticoats and pulling a loose cotton dress made by her mother over her head; the smell of dust and sunshine in the fabric. Katniss thinks about it but she knows she won't go. The thought of riding in the carriage away from the house makes her sick with anxiety. Why? Is that Momma's pills, too?

Cato will be home in a matter of hours. He will smile and kiss her cheek and she will feel that strangeness in her stomach, that flicker of hope that perhaps it will be different; perhaps she is wrong, or crazy.

Perhaps she is crazy.

Katniss thinks of Emlie Foot, who, consumed with fever, told Katniss that the madness would get her, too. That in madness there is no home.

Emlie, like so many women from the seam, lived with a violent man who expected her to be both pregnant, and scrubbing the kitchen floor, year in, year out, and for a decade she obeyed. She had a child for every year of marriage until she reached double figures and decided enough was enough. It was late for an abortion but Emlie had tried anyway, with the help of her aunt and dirty implements, and the child had been born and quickly died leaving Emlie with blood poisoning that made her skin green. Prim was confined upstairs whilst the woman raged on a cot in the corner of the kitchen near the stove, their mother tending to her through the night. Katniss thinks of how her mother did not try to save the baby. It was so small. Katniss saw its heart beating through translucent skin. Her mother placed it in a blanket and laid it in a basket. It didn't cry.

Emlie lived, and she left home. Katniss remembers seeing her waving goodbye to the children, nine little figures, barefooted, flanking their aunt – leaving madness behind.

What must it have taken to do that? At the time, Katniss wondered why Emlie had not left sooner, now she thinks she understands.


End file.
